The Grand Wash Trail runs 2.5 miles through a deep canyon with sheer cliffs and narrow slots Scenic Drive (west) and Highway 24 (east). The canyon features dome-topped walls and a short section of slots called The Narrows. Bighorn sheep are sometimes seen on ledges over the wash, and interesting side canyons provide additional room to explore.

Desert Varnish is comprised of clay minerals, oxides and hydroxides of manganese and / or iron, as well as other particles such as sand grains and trace elements

View over the entrance to Grand Wash from the Cassidy Arch Trail

The high walls of Grand Wash offer a shady respite during peak summer heat

The Wild Bunch found refuge in a maze of canyons across SE Utah, an area that came to be known as the Outlaw Trail

The 'Narrows', a short section of smooth slots, are located approximately 1.3 miles down-canyon from the trailhead off Scenic Drive

Butch Cassidy supposedly drew his surname from an elder small-time horse thief he admired in his youth, and first name 'Butch' from a short stint in a Wyoming butcher shop

The Cassidy Arch Trail begins in Grand Wash and climbs over 640' to a slickrock bench above and behind the arch

The term 'reef' is used to describe a section of land or sea through which navigation and passage is very difficult

Water is the chief erosional agent in Capitol Reef, assisted by wind, gravity and freeze-thaw cycles

Capitol Reef National Park derives its name in part from the rounded Navajo Sandstone domes that resemble the domes of capitol buildings throughout the US

The Fremont people lived mostly in central Utah, and the ancestral Puebloans occupied the Four Corners region; these cultures can be distinguished by their different tools, pottery and rock art

Tafoni are small, rounded, smooth-edged openings in vertical rock surfaces that often have a honeycomb-like appearance